This week, we're pleased to welcome author Téa Cooper with her latest novel, LILY'S LEAP. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. The author will offer a free copy of Lily's Leap to a lucky blog visitor. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.
From Escape's Queen of Australian historical romance comes a
story about a privileged member of Australian's squattocracy, a bushranger, and
a very special horse.
Born into the rough, but privileged society of the Australian
colonial landowners, Lilibeth Dungarven finds herself married, widowed, and,
much to her distress, back under her father’s thumb, all before her
twenty-first birthday. Determined not to forgo her dream of breeding the
perfect racehorse, Lilibeth ignores propriety and sets out to restore the
family’s flagging fortunes.
When Captain Tom and his mismatched band of bushrangers
stumble across a mob of the best horses they’ve ever seen, and the daughter of
the famed Dungarven horse stud, they know their fortunes have changed. Their
catch is worth a king’s ransom. All they have to do is hold her for seven days.
How hard can it be to control the pampered daughter of a colonial upstart?
**An Excerpt from Lily’s Leap**
Hunter Valley, Australia 1848
Lilibeth
Dungarven’s cry of pure pleasure soared skywards as the massive black stallion
rose to clear the fallen tree, sending the horrors of the last four years
scuttling into the dirt of the ancient land.
Clenching her knees against Nero’s heaving flanks she bent
low, ducking the overhanging branches framing the bush track, her cheek pressed
to the warmth of his muscular neck. When the erratic pounding in her chest
settled she drew Nero to a shuddering halt and pushed the damp curls back from
her forehead.
A pair of black cockatoos, disturbed by her madcap gallop,
shrieked their annoyance and resettled in the whispering casuarina trees. The
crack of their beaks as they threw the mangled nuts to the ground filled the
silence. Below her the ribbon of sandstone road weaved its way towards Payne’s
Crossing and she shielded her eyes from the sun, searching for her mob of
horses.
A glint of reflected sunlight drew her eye to a mounted
figure in the middle of the road. Despite the hat pulled low shadowing his
face, the stockwhip crack of his words registered deep in her belly.
‘Bail up! Guns down and off the horses.’
‘What do you think you...?’ Constricted by the tension in her
throat her words petered out. No one would dare steal such a valuable mob of
horses. They were branded. Everyone in the colony knew the Dungarven brand. To
lose them was unthinkable. Years of breeding — the first pure Dungarven
bloodlines. Months proving herself capable of managing the sale and the trip to
Sydney. And now a hold up! It would not happen. Not if Lilibeth Dungarven had
any say in the matter.
Téa Cooper lives in a stone
cottage on one hundred acres of bushland, just outside the nineteenth century village
of Wollombi, NSW Australia. When she isn't writing, Téa can be found haunting
the local museum or chatting to the locals, who offer a never-ending source of
inspiration. Both Lily’s Leap
and Matilda’s Freedom are
set in and around Wollombi. In October, Jazz Baby, a 1920s rags to riches
story set in Sydney will be released and in February, Forgotten Fragrance, Book I of a family
saga entitled From the Ocean to the
Outback. At the moment she is working on a parallel time-line series called
The Adventures of Miss Abigail Wynter.
She has also written three contemporary romances.
Website: www.teacooperauthor.com
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/teacooperauthor/
